«Together not by luck»
«Together not by luck» is an exhibition which would like to talk about people around us, about the relation of man with himself, the unconscious, the others, the society, the environment. We hope that the small texts under the photographs will help the visitor to understand the working axis of each creator, to realize the theoretical or technical individuality by which the artist approaches and lightens his subject.
We hope that -through this not at all random coexistence of different esthetics, angles and performing usages- it becomes clear that photography is not one. The current creative photography has nothing to do with the artistic photography of the last decades of previous century. Some positions have been entrenched, the resistance towards others have been loosen, the relationship between the mean and itself, the so called objective reality around it, the other arts, the society, have changed. There are more acceptable ways of expression and creativity with the specific mean. Technology has offered some more new tools which naturally many people have collected in their quiver in order to widen their vocabulary…. as far as both the meaning and the form is concerned.
The world has changed and keeps changing every day, so the art changes and photography changes as well.
A few words about the constitution “Aspects of Balkan Photography”
Photography Center of Thessaloniki for the 16th year continues organizing the constitution of Balkan photography meetings in Thessaloniki.
This year during September-October 2012, with the participation of photographers from Balkan countries, a lot of parallel exhibitions, conferences, workshops, round tables, screenings, lectures etc., are organized in the city.
Significant trends of contemporary photography at this side of Europe are presented as cooperative suggestions by dynamic and active Photography Centers. Through the whole of exhibitions the convergences and the divergences from European photography- as for the content and the expression- become obvious and furthermore the special quests, obsessions and particularities characterizing the mosaic of people who live in Balkans, become prominent.
For 15 years now - of course after a lot of hard effort and organizing - the mutual understanding and cooperation network we have set up in this area and in rest of Europe as well, operates and bears fruit. Perhaps this network is a crutch to overcome the crisis. The fact that this year too, we keep on without any financial support from anywhere, hoping for the best, is the first parameter for "Together not by luck".
“Together” is our opinion about the current time, the crisis, the creation, the dialogue about art and its position in the society.
Argiris Liapopoulos
All these events are the formal participation of Photography Center of Thessaloniki in the celebration by the Central Municipality of Thessaloniki for the 100 years since the liberation of the city from the Ottomans and it is organized under the aegis of Ministry of Education, Religion, Culture and Athleticism.
Vasilis Karkatselis
Curator of the exhibition
Art Director of Photography Center of Thessaloniki
Dimitris Zografos is a contemporary runabout photographer of the public space. Whenever he is in a mood for shoot he wanders in an ultra-restricted area of the city of Thessaloniki, an area with its own character, its own people, its own life. In this area, where obviously he feels like home, where people recognize him as their own photographer, he doesn't seek landscapes, shadows or compositions but the today's folk person. Without hiding his intention for shooting he startles his models with his unexpected angles of view and his flash that dazzles in the daylight. He has conquered a technique that pays off magnificent results, the without any ornament portraits of the unposed and for this reason real society of us.
Dubravka Lazic deals with shadows. Using old photographic techniques, she creates unique non repeatable images which can bring to light what is hidden into the electrified, by the intention of consumption, shadows. The shadow reveals, warns and creates original images full of intense.
Boris Kramaric brings to attention the issue of economic migrants, what they leave behind, where they are heading to and how they live in the new places they migrate to. Through authentic photos-current in their time of capture- the story of a Croatian family who decides to leave their home in the countryside in order to move to an industrial area in Germany, is presented. Like with so many families from Southern Europe (including Greece as well) the migration for an easier economic life, which though does not also mean better life, leaves back a vacuum, which can hurt as a faded old photo.
Boris Kramaric
Derya Kilic uses the history of art, not only as a method of creating images or superficial observation of reality around us, but as a background and tool in order to articulate her own cry about what can be hidden underneath the surface of real, in order to denounce the woman’s position in our society and the practice of violence on her. She reconstructs famous paintings which glorify woman and her body, and remakes photographical portraits of famous women from art books. Though she adds her own raw comments, the obvious wounds by whacking, whipping, beating, and generally violent actions against them.
Elcin Acun, in photographical full sense and through technique (metaphorically), eats her “guts” through a set of self-portraits which disputes the photographical truth of the document. After she disappears photo-realistically all those elements of her femininity she wonders: Am I erotic?
Using her body and after she crushes it by erasing all its special characteristics distinguishing the special woman beauty, she poses an issue about the position or the image of woman in men’s society. In this particular way, she wonders/protests about the essence of woman’s position on the determined limits -by the way, by which powers? -about beauty, about the construction of her body. She resists to the characteristics which are imposed by the wide-circulation magazines for a woman-object, a consumption gear and mostly for a woman as an erotic desire and a common subject of pornographic relation.
Let it be a question, with which right, does she destroy the common sense about how the woman’s body should be.
Andreas Skreli: A voyage home, Albania. The photographer who has been living for years in Greece, returns to homeland, as a photographer, and naturally almost as a filmmaker keeping his camera “on” constantly, recording all the way. Trained in the western aspect of composition, the way of facing the landscape, the human elliptic position in it, the street photography and the magazine photography, he creates his own come back movie with perfect images, a little bit in and a little bit out. The sensitivity towards the unbroken relation between man and nature is taken as granted. Today Albania could not be anything but the images of his own return and not the new statues or the squares, the new buildings and avenues.
The reality of Manos Chrysovergis is much more cruel than romanticism would like to persuade us for. More than the consumption and the mushy colorful commercial photos are trying to make us believe, or the photos of those photographers who take the camera in their hands only when they are in front of a theme which is wonderful by itself. The photography of New Realism describes the Truth without abusing us by showing just joy and laughter. The photography of New Realism with a flash and the creator’s will as the only weapons, tears the darkness, lightening the new black and white misery, talks with us honestly -without lies and make up- for experiences and memories even if they do not look nice. What is or what it has to be nice (in life, in art, in photography) is a subject which stands by itself without anyone asking for it but asking- together.
Vivi Daskalopoulou is looking for the personality and the character of whom she is taking photograph of, through a new extremely dark way of portrait. The way she poses the subject is ambiguous. It is the photographer and not the model who decides about who is the one whom she is taking the photo of. There is no reason for those who are photographed, to show who they really are, or which is their inner world is.
The photographer invents him a priori, prepares him and projects him on himself filling the atmosphere with question-marks. Under a set of projects -secret or apparent- the external characteristics are hinted. The face-musk gets one more musk or maybe finally does it reveal its internal unrest?
Elena Ganda shows a special relationship with her models, her own people, as she approaches them too much, becomes part of them. Photos almost in point blank. Photos which reveal the absolute truth through the detail, the exposure of the individuality which leaves out the general information, the ability for references, the possibility for us -as spectators- to recognize what is underneath, where does this “close up” refers to, whom or what it concerns, the relations which are developed beyond the limits of the image.
Seckin Tercan operates in the frame of the revelation of the partial. He approaches exceedingly his people to introduce them to us in a hospital environment and in an enviromental isolation/sterility. However, they are hiding, they don't disclose their body, their gender, their features, their personality. Whoever dares to ask for the knowledge of the hidden, whoever spectator of his act seeks for comprehension is bound to act spiritually and recompose his own story, based on the details, to find his own reduction for the hidden. It's about the absolute allegory of the debts of the exhibition viewer. The creator introduces (much or less it doesn't matter) and the spectator reads and while discoursing recomposes.
Elpida Katsika dives into the deep waters of modern topography in order to give her own answer to the questions regarding our relationship with earth. Small groups of people mark this relationship. Thanks to the perfect, well balanced and harmonious lines of nature, new and acceptable relationships can be developed. Balance and respect to the coexistence of both nature and people is her positive answer, her suggestion.
Iordanis Stylidis presents samples of his digital diaries where the conjunction of pictures and texts and the strong temporarily powerful meaning are investigated and charted. This possible connection of pictures and texts is defining the unstable and short term limits of the experience during voyages, the experience of the collective actions, the acts of the uncontrolled, furious self and, furthermore, the state of the constantly moving self in search of the meaning of time as it is upload and comprehend.
Digital Diaries are revealing a past triumphal reassurance or a fall of an attempt of expression, of a desire long before forgotten, but now remembered, recreated and digitally distributed. The equilibrium or the instability of self, the psychological short period manipulations and control of the crossing incidents, The stasis (stop), the withdrawals, the stares and the open questions are the main core contents of these diaries. Constituting the surplus of the identity of the long and vast landscapes, of the local formations of a concept. The tracks and the restrains of mind and look while been fixed towards the accurate land details and fields of interest. The construction and the abandonment of the meaning of the places, the relations and the landscapes, constant wandering and the following disciplines of transformation of experience into a projection and a specimen of pictures and reason.
Murat Han Er covers his people by bandages and medical patches. We can see no skin at all. Every element of the model’s personality gets lost under them. We all look like we have been experienced a general surgery, we exist just like after an accident or a wreck. Exactly the same happens in our white surrounding, as, in some way, the strips which cover it are extended from us towards it, taking away every possibility of characterizing it. We are hurt and the same happens with the space around us.
Anyway, the title of this set of photos is “Inner Hurt” which means that, the creator of these photographs asks from us not to stay in this first reading. As far as the Hurt is concerned, he asks from us to read the thoughts, the sorrow, the boredom, the collapsing of our inner values. What happens in our image is much more less than what happens inside us, in our soul, in our mind, in our consciousness, in our morality, in our fights for life or not. Finally, the Inner Hurt is what is most important, the patches are just the in between, let us not remain at these.
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